


homunculus

by itinerantmagpie



Category: Lancer (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Body Image, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gore, Hallucinations, I used to think HORUS was scrappy and cool but it turns out they're a death cult, Oops, existential squick, queer coded robots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-17 19:07:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16101923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itinerantmagpie/pseuds/itinerantmagpie
Summary: "A relic-code predating HORUS’s official foundation date, UNCLEAR_END/NOT THIS TIME seems to be adead branch of transhumanist exploration: thanatologic praxis. Utilizing a now-classically HORUS greywashnanite swarm, this system triggers on one of a number of user-defined parameters to “reanimate” the user’sbody using a backup homunculus subjectivity. It may also be externally 'piped' into the brain cavity, assuming it has been properly drained and decomposition has not begun yet."Or:  congratulations, pilot





	1. homage_to_you_the_one_that_is_manifold.txt

**1**

they piped the gray slurry into you to fill the bullet holes and the space where you used to be in your head, before blood loss choked it.

sometimes you feel it pressing at the back of this body's eyes. this is not your skin. you are not real. you are replacement.

**10**

the tag on your breast pocket says "pvt. let'aang", which is who they say you are. you remember like her and you sit in her skull. you are her.

her bright mind is only a puddle of gray dust on a far-away world, now. you saw the pictures.

**11**

**memory is an instinct without a voice. it is reaching for a gun at your side and pulling the trigger, and when you do you get a birthday party or a funeral or a first kiss or nothing, not even thought--**

  **100**

the substance keeps limbs moving but does not warm them, squeezes the heart into beating.

at night you wake to blackness and feel nothing at all before, tentacular, you-it curls around the nerves in the corpse of pvt. iva let'aang.


	2. osiris_partitioned_into_twenty_six_drives.txt

**101**

(a nightmare, often: you fumble out of knotted sheets and plod off to fetch water. when you return, there is someone else in your bed.

it is the woman whose skin you wear. she stares, blank, and screams like a child, not stopping.)

sleep is fitful.

**110**

the personality backup was advertised as 98% accurate.

are the dreams products of the 98% that came before, butchered memories missing the tiny linchpins that held them together?

or are they of the terrified, uncertain 2?

**111**

\--dipped into an acid bath. when the brain tissue is fully--

\--gorgon-class interface equipped with basilisk patterns--

\--location uncertain. please advise, iva. iva? where--

**1000**

you will never forget the way their faces crumpled when you greeted them for the first last time. it was supposed to be a celebration, a defiance. 

two percent off a celebration is a wake. 

they retract the whisky bottle they were promising you, and instead of placing it in your frozen hands leave it by the door on the way out. 

two percent off a human is a#######


	3. your_beloved_sister_searches_to_see_you.txt

**1001**

she came up to you yesterday at the canteen and asked:

where you been? missed you.

your stolen mouth flaps: i was dead, i guess, and now i'm not.

**1010**

eating takeout and drinking sticky artificial whiskey, you watch her sit two feet away on the bed, perched for flight.

she will not blink, not take her hands away from her wounds, and she is frozen there for an hour.

when you try to move her, she hisses.

**1011**

\--so thank you. i just wanted to thank you. you did so much for me, and i hope you-- fuck, got over it? over death? 

no, you want to tell her, you did not help her. the corpse did, the other woman did, the stolen memories did.

you try to say it.

**1101**

they are all staring at your earnest failure to exist as the person they knew. 

your sobbing. the silver muck dropping from the unraveling stitches, squirming from the peeling blue veins of your hands. was that fake too?

you don't go to the canteen anymore. 

 


End file.
